It took a year of peaceful protests for 3,000-odd villagers of Rojka Meo in Mewat district to finally get their due. They were given revised compensation of their land taken up by the government for developing an industrial township in the area. On Thursday, a large number of villagers sat on a dharna on the Gurgaon-Alwar State Highway at Rojka Meo in Mewat district for seven hours. It was after this that a decision to hike their compensation by Rs 21 lakh per acre was reached.

ALWAR: Illegal mining on Aravali hills has not only raised environmental concerns, but also resulted in huge loss of human lives in the state. As per the records made public in the state assembly recently, 40 people have lost their lives due to illegal mining in Mewat's Alwar region over a three years' period.

The police's apathetic attitude towards these deaths has also added to the sorrow of victims' family members. Several cases have come to the fore in which police did not register cases against illegal miners despite repeated requests by the victims' family members. This makes it hard to prove whether these people, mostly labourers, died in mining work.

JAIPUR: After the March 22 crackdown against illegal gravel mines in Mewat's Pahari region resulting in the arrest of 97 people, some politicians had approached chief minister Ashok Gehlot against IPS officer Vikas Kumar, the SP of Bharatpur who led the drive.

Sources said the move by the politicians ended in the shifting of Vikas Kumar about a month later to the 2nd armed battalion in Kota, generally considered a punishment posting.

The Haryana Government has decided to suspend granting of licences to stone-crushers in the three districts of Faribadad, Gurgaon and Mewat to check sporadic complaints of “illegal mining and illegal transportation of minerals” in this belt. Though no time frame for new approvals has been set, sources said the directions would be applicable “for the time being”.

Transportation of illegal minerals in Haryana also stopped

The Supreme Court on Monday stopped illegal mining in the villages of Kota, Gangani, Sarai, Mohammadpur and Kharag Jalalpur in Mewat district of Haryana, taking note of the report submitted by the Central Empowered Committee about large-scale illegal mining taking place in these areas.

JAIPUR/ALWAR: In one of the biggest crackdowns on illegal mining in state's Mewat region in the recent past, police on Thursday arrested over 100 people from unlawful gravel mines in Pahari police station area in Bharatpur district and seized equipment worth crores of rupees. Besides, few persons were also detained.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court today slammed the police and others for their failure to stop illegal mining in Haryana. The court asked the Home Secretary to step in to stop rampant exploitation of mineral wealth. The directions by Justice Ranjit Singh came on a bunch of related petitions filed against the State of Haryana by four accused, including Ayyub of Malahaka village under Tauru police station in Mewat district.

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has approved a Rs 100-crore project to improve supply of drinking water in Rewari district in Haryana. A spokesman of the Haryana Public Health Engineering Department said NABARD had also approved another project for augmentation of water supply in 15 schemes at an estimated cost of Rs 10.2 crore.

This Education Day (November 11), the principal of each elementary school in India will receive VVIP mail -- a letter from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Contained therein will be a highly personalised message of the PM for the children of the country, who have long been guaranteed the Right to Education (RTE) by law, but who may not still know of it.

This is your empowerment, Gehlot tells women
Fighting the ignominy of being among the worst States in the country when it comes to mother mortality rate (MMR) and infant mortality rate (IMR), the Rajasthan Government on Monday launched a major initiative to protect newborns and mothers. Thousands of people including a large number of women turned up in this tehsil town to witness the launch, which Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot termed a “major step towards empowering women”.